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On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:55:18 +0000 "Ben Goodger" <goodgerster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On the dansguardian website it says that dansguardian is GPL licensed for > personal use, but downloading it from the website for any sort of commercial > purpose is prohibited. Restricted, not prohibited - a single download from the website is fine. It's only upgrades that require a commercial download licence. Full releases will make their way into Debian and elsewhere as normal. As the guy says, he's had it checked with RMS and I can see why RMS agreed - it is similar to the method that RMS himself used in the development of emacs: Develop extensions and upgrades on a commercial basis and fold those into the main GPL release in due course. Commercial users get their features implemented on their timetable, GPL users get stable code after the commercial user has paid to have the bugs removed from the newer features! It's quite cool, really. MANY free software projects get *VERY NARKED* when free software distributions try to snatch updates to packages between releases - the whole point is that developers have access to CVS/SVN and developers decide when that code is ready for the masses. Distributions maintainers should *not* take it upon themselves to think "it's been N months/years since the last release and there's a feature in CVS/SVN that is really cool, we'll package an interim release". *IF* upstream make snapshots available, that's fine - if not, distributions and users simply have to wait for the upstream release. One example of this was Fedora's behaviour towards pilot-link - it got to the point that pilot-link took down anonymous CVS access to prevent non-developers from seeing the development code. Remember: code on private CVS/SVN has not been released, not been distributed - the modifications do not have to be public until such time as the code is distributed. The GPL comes into force upon distribution, not CVS/SVN commit. What DG is doing is similar, just that he wants to be paid for the interim development before the entire, stable, codebase gets a full release. > Am I correct in thinking that either this is a violation of the GPL and that > I need not pay commercially, or the Debian packages are purely GPL licensed > and I need not pay? The Debian packages (and RedHat etc.) are specifically covered later in the same page and are specifically excluded from the definition of commercial use. He is entitled, as Simon noted, to distribute as he sees fit - the GPL still applies so a commercial organisation can download it then redistribute it. i.e. the end result of the page is not what it appears. The very end of the page is clearer: So, if Debian puts DG on their website, they have to restrict downloads to non commercial users, right? No, not right. Once you have a copy of a GPL app, no one can put any (non-GPL) restrictions on it - not even me the author. I can ask people to pay for downloading DG, but once its left this site it is under the GPL which means it is free (as in freedom) and free (as in beer - provided they want to give it away for free). GPL means GPL which means no restrictions can be imposed on redistribution so the Debian would treat it as any other GPL app. Of course, should a commercial user want to upgrade his copy of DG he got with Debian by downloading from my site, he would have to pay unless he waited for Debian to release their version. But I am unsure of how a commercial user could sleep at night making illegal downloads from my site and profiting from my years work. > If so, this guy has a screw loose No, he's fine. He's just trying to make a living. > - who the hell uses software downloaded > from the project website as opposed to the repos? (Someone not running GNU/Linux.) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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